Archive for December 6th, 2007

Motor Trend (www.motortrend.com), the world’s
automotive authority and part of Source Interlink Media, today announced the selection of the
new 2008 Cadillac CTS as the 2008 Motor Trend Car of the Year™. The complete report on
Motor Trend’s 2008 Car of the Year will be published in the magazine’s January issue, available
on newsstands December 4, 2007.
“The Cadillac CTS marks the first time in decades an American automobile has been designed
and engineered with an eye on the global marketplace,” said Angus MacKenzie, editor-in-chief
of Motor Trend. “Among its many excellent qualities, perhaps the most valuable one is that it
shows Detroit can build a world class car to compete with the best Munich, Stuttgart and Toyota
City have to offer. With the CTS, Detroit is officially back in the car business, not just the truck
or SUV business.”
“The CTS’s winning attributes go far beyond a well-designed façade,” said MacKenzie. “It’s the
star of a new GM revival, and with a base car price of just $32,990, the car is truly accessible to a
wide spectrum of car buyers.”
The base model CTS includes an impressive 263-horsepower, VVT V-6 (a 304-horsepower
direct-injection version is optional), eight-speaker Bose audio, 17-inch wheels and a dual zone
climate control. In addition to offering a classy, distinctive interior, superb fit and finish, and
starched-crease tailored design, the six-speed automatic version of the CTS goes from 0-to-60
mph in 6.3 seconds. Motor Trend editors particularly enjoyed the car’s road-hugging dexterity,
responsive feel, and sporty acceleration.
The 2008 Field of Contenders
Motor Trend editors faced the daunting challenge of choosing one winner from one of the
toughest Car of the Year fields in the history of the award.
“This year’s 18-car field was laden with truly significant vehicles,” said MacKenzie. “We had
all-new interpretations of high-volume benchmark cars that virtually define their respective
categories, such as the Honda Accord and Chrysler-Dodge minivan. We had reworked icons
such as the Mini Cooper, Subaru Impreza WRX and Scion xB. We had new cars with old
nameplates that carried the collective hopes of an entire company, along with all-new vehicles
from Mercedes-Benz and Audi.”
To be eligible for Car of the Year, a vehicle must be totally new or redesigned, and released in
the 12 months prior to January 1, 2008. Besides the Cadillac CTS, this year’s field of contenders
for Car of the Year included:
Audi S5/A5 Ford Focus Scion xB
Audi TT
Chevrolet Malibu
Chrysler Town & Country
Dodge Grand Caravan
Dodge Avenger
Ford Taurus
Honda Accord
Mercedes-Benz C-Class
Mini Cooper
Mitsubishi Lancer
Scion xD
Subaru Impreza
Volvo C30
Volvo XC70
Return to Prominence
With the CTS, Cadillac—and GM—captures the golden calipers nearly six decades after
winning the first Motor Trend Car of the Year™ award in 1949.
“The CTS obliterates the ‘old man’ image of Cadillac,” said MacKenzie. “This car will turn
heads in the same way that the elite European models do, but it is unmistakably American and
uniquely Cadillac. This is a bold and uncompromising showpiece of a sedan.”
MacKenzie added, “Tested and developed in the U.S., Germany and China, the CTS exhibits a
global poise far beyond its predecessors. The chassis has the race track in its DNA. And it has
an interior that manages to be avant-garde and innovative without being difficult to operate. The
navigation/information touchscreen sets a new industry standard for stylishness and ease of use.”
About the Testing and Evaluation Process

Each year since 1949, the editorial staff of Motor Trend has evaluated eligible vehicles for its
“Car of the Year” based on three key categories: Significance, Superiority, and Value.
Superiority refers to engineering excellence, advancement in design, utilization of resources and
safety. Vehicle concept and execution are important, as are use of materials, packaging,
dynamics, styling and fuel consumption. Significance considers how well the vehicle does the
job its maker intended it to do, and how it impacts or changes its particular market segment,
influences consumer perceptions, and transforms product development trends. The value
question asks, “What does this vehicle deliver in relation to what the consumer has to pay to
purchase and own it?”
See More on Motortrend.com
Motortrend.com features more than 20 car videos detailing each of the contenders, the testing,
and behind-the-scene discussions and debates among the judges.
High-resolution images of the winner are available upon request and at
www.motortrend.com/media. Multimedia coverage of the testing and selection process will be
broadcast on Motor Trend Radio, hosted by Bob Long.

About MOTOR TREND
MOTOR TREND, part of Source Interlink Media, was founded in 1949 and has a circulation of 1.1
million and a total readership of 7.1 million. Internationally recognized as one of the leading brands in
automotive publishing, MOTOR TREND comprises Motor Trend Magazine; motortrend.com; Motor
Trend Radio; Truck Trend; Motor Trend International Auto Shows; Motor Trend en Espanol; and the
renowned Motor Trend Car, Sport/Utility and Truck of the Year Awards program. Source Interlink
Media is a division of Source Interlink Companies, Inc., (NASDAQ: SORC), a media and marketing
services company. Source Interlink (www.sourceinterlink.com) is one of the largest publishers of
magazines and online content for enthusiast audiences and a leading distributor of home entertainment
products, including DVDs, music CDs, magazines, games, books and related items.
# # #
For more information, contact:
Gravitas Communications
Jocelyn Johnson, 646-619-1146, jjohnson@gravitas-pr.com
Brian Posnanski, 314-968-7712, bposnanski@gravitas-pr.com


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THOUGH corporate deal making is filled with uncertainty, one thing that you can generally count on is that the lawyers always get paid.

Investment banks have received a lot of attention for their big lump-sum fees and year-end bonuses, but the legal profession has also been cashing in on the frenzy of mergers and acquisitions, at rates traditionally set at hundreds of dollars an hour.

For some firms, billable hours are just the beginning. As the boom rolled on, law firms specializing in mergers and acquisitions increasingly engaged in premium billing, charging fees in excess of their total hourly billings. Think of it as a tip for good work. Whether a client pays a premium depends upon its satisfaction with the result, the size and complexity of the transaction, and the nature and length of the attorney-client relationship.

But since the credit market began to tighten this summer, an event that brought new deals to a crawl and has upset several old ones, many lawyers have been wondering whether the premium party is over, or whether it has taken merely a short pause. (It’s obviously easier to get a premium when demand for your services is high.)

There’s a lot of stuff in the pipeline, but new business intake is slow, and people are expecting a relatively quiet fall as the tail of the old deals gets worked through,” said Charles Nathan, a co-chairman of the mergers and acquisition group at Latham & Watkins. “People compare it to the Augean stables; there’s a lot to clean up.”

Premium billing usually turns up in large, complex transactions — the kind of marquee deals that have all but vanished. For law firms on the receiving end, premiums can mean enormous windfalls.

“A 25 or 50 percent premium over total hourly billings is not uncommon,” a law firm consultant, Peter Zeughauser, said. “Fees are huge when the deals happen.”

Premium billing has helped some firms achieve record profits. In 2001, the 10 most profitable New York firms had average profits per partner of $1.68 million, according to data collected by the magazine American Lawyer. In 2006, the figure had grown to $2.67 million — an increase of 60 percent in five years.

Among the nation’s most profitable law firms were Sullivan & Cromwell and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which advised on many blockbuster mergers and acquisitions in the last few years. At Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, the boutique firm whose founders include the well-known acquisitions specialist Martin Lipton, profits per partner were nearly $4 million last year.

A law firm’s fee depends on factors that include the size and complexity of the transaction, as well as the nature and duration of the attorney-client relationship. A firm that is hoping for repeat business from a client, for example, might charge a low fee. Conversely, if a firm worked for a client at a discount on several deals that did not go through, the fee for a successful deal might be higher, reflecting work on the broken deals. These aspects make it difficult to generalize about fees in the mergers-and-acquisitions context.

There’s a lot of flexibility here,” said Ward Bower, a law firm consultant. “Effectively, it’s what the client is willing to pay, but it’s a matter of negotiation.”

Lawyers say that there are reasons they should receive more than just their hourly fees. Hourly rates, they say, often fail to capture the full value they offer when advising on transformative, high-stakes transactions.

“In large, intense, demanding M.&A. deals, the hourly rate is probably not a good proxy” for the value of legal work, said Morton A. Pierce, the chairman of the mergers and acquisition group at Dewey & LeBoeuf.

John C. Coates, a professor at Harvard Law School and former Wachtell, Lipton partner, said that setting legal fees for merger advisory work was more art than science.

“How do you quantify the headache, the scrambling, the ingenuity and the innovation that happen in the course of the deal?” Mr. Coates asked.

Victor Lewkow, a partner at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, suggested that innovative legal approaches could be worth far more than the time it took to think them up. “If one brilliant light bulb went off,” he said, “but it took only an hour, there’s no hourly rate that will reflect that value added.”

“How long will it be before corporate clients say, ‘Enough already’?” said Susan Hackett, senior vice president and general counsel of the Association of Corporate Counsel, an in-house lawyers group.

Many private equity firms have already balked at premium billing. During the recent run of big leveraged buyouts, lawyers say, private equity buyers have generally been less willing to pay premiums than corporate clients. (Private equity firms are still coveted as clients, though, because of their repeat business.)

Over the years, using premium billing for merger-related work has ebbed and flowed with deal-making cycles. The billable hour remains the standard, even though its death “has been prophesied for 30 or 40 years,” a law firm consultant, Bruce MacEwen, said. “Lawyers are risk-averse, and the billable hour is perfect for the risk-averse. It’s a ‘cost plus’ model; you can’t lose.” (This is especially true when a growing number of top lawyers charge $1,000 an hour.)

Even for multibillion-dollar deals, the fee calculus typically begins by multiplying hourly rates by hours worked.

“Law firms don’t bill like bankers as a percentage of the deal; it’s not their model,” another law firm consultant, Brad Hildebrandt, said.

One firm, though, has moved beyond billable hours to the flat fee preferred by bankers: Wachtell, Lipton. A former Wachtell lawyer described a typical bill as follows: “There’s a paragraph stating something like, ‘For legal services rendered in connection with Transaction X,’ then a dot leader, then a number followed by six zeros.” He said he worked on some deals where Wachtell was paid more than the bankers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/business/03fees.html


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While the report is considered less important than the Labor Department’s measure of job growth, which will be released tomorrow, the strong number took many in the market by surprise.

“That came out of left field, huh?” said Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist at the research firm MFR. Economists had expected a gain of about 70,000 jobs for November. “It’s not a dead lock that we’re going to get a good payroll number, but it certainly caused me to raise my estimates.”

The government’s report on November employment will be the last piece of important data before the Fed meets on Tuesday, when policy makers are expected to cut interest rates by at least a quarter-point. Fed officials have hinted that they are open to lowering rates to help avert a recession, but a sign of underlying strength — like a big gain in jobs — could persuade them to take a less aggressive stance.

“The economy might prove more resilient than a lot of the doomsayers have been saying,” said Marc Chandler, who oversees currency strategy at the bank Brown Brothers Harriman. “It’s not like the U.S. economy is falling off the edge of the cliff.”

Futures contracts on the Fed’s actions showed investors pulling back yesterday from their expectations for a half-point decrease in interest rates. Still, the market sees a cut as certain.

Some economists were skeptical of the A.D.P. report, which showed that job losses in manufacturing and construction, both hit hard by the housing downturn, had slowed to a trickle. Payrolls at financial firms appeared to increase.

“If you look at other evidence about the labor market, it points to weakening,” said Mr. Shapiro of MFR, noting that sentiment surveys have suggested a bleaker employment outlook among consumers. “There’s something funky in these numbers, but they are what they are.”

Joel Prakken, the chairman of the consulting company Macroeconomic Advisers, who developed the A.D.P. report, stood by his results. Referring to the job losses, he said: “This is a much smaller decline than the average decline of the last 18 months. We could be approaching the end of that contraction.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/business/06econ.html?ref=business 


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The Company’s fully integrated businesses and activities include:

– Publishing and providing enthusiast media content including 70
magazines, over 65 events, two television shows, a radio program, 90
related Web sites and 400 branded products for automobile, marine,
equine, outdoor sports, home tech and daytime television
– Distribution and fulfillment of entertainment products to major retail
chains throughout North America and directly to consumers of
entertainment products ordered through the Internet
– Import and export of periodicals to more than 100 markets worldwide
– Managing product selection and placement of impulse items at checkout
counters
– Processing and collection of rebate claims and management of point-of-
purchase sales data
– Design, manufacture and installation of wire fixtures and displays in
major retail chains
– Licensing of children’s and family-friendly home entertainment products

Source Interlink Companies, Inc. will host a teleconference at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Dec. 06, 2007 to discuss the quarterly results. Source Interlink Companies Earnings Conference Call

Recommendation : Speculatively Buy


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http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/default.aspx?cik=771950

http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/fetchFilingFrameset.aspx?FilingID=5579154&Type=HTML


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Fleetwood Enterprises Inc. (FLE)

Fleetwood Enterprises, Inc. produces recreational vehicles and manufactured housing primarily in the United States. Its recreational vehicles include motor homes, travel trailers, and folding trailers. The company also produces HUD-Code manufactured houses, as well as single-section and multi-section manufactured homes. In addition, it engages in the manufacture of fiberglass; provision of lumber brokerage services; and import distribution business.

Recommendation* Buy

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=FLE 

Home Solutions of America Inc. (HSOA)

Home Solutions of America, Inc. provides restoration, construction, and interior services to commercial and residential properties in the United States. It operates through two segments, Restoration and Construction Services, and Interior Services. The Restoration and Construction Services segment provides recovery services, including initial set up services in an impacted area; and drying, dehumidification, cleanup, and removal of debris from commercial and residential areas. Its construction services include providing services to specialized building markets, including hospitality and gaming, insurance, education, and healthcare markets.

Recommendation* Speculatively Buy (High Risk & High Risk) You can profit from short term trading as long as it haven’t release any huge loss financial statement (if there is any), and the price of stock still remain attractive.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=HSOA 

United Online Inc. (UNTD)

United Online, Inc. provides consumer Internet and media services primarily in the United States. It operates through two segments, Communications, and Content and Media. The Communications segment provides consumer Internet access and email under the NetZero and Juno brands. Its Internet access services consist of both dial-up and broadband digital subscriber line services.

Recommendation* Hold  AND WATCH

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=UNTD 


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Westwood One Inc. (WON), Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (RCL), and Carnival Corp. (CCL) Remain as Community Spotlight In General Entertainment Sector

http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/716.html

View: Upcoming Events | Recent Events :General Entertainment

Date Company Event
11/14/07 CCL CARNIVAL CORP coverage initiated by Wachovia
11/14/07 FUN CEDAR FAIR LP coverage initiated by Wachovia
11/14/07 RCL ROYAL CARIBBEAN CR coverage initiated by Wachovia
11/12/07 FUN CEDAR FAIR LP upgraded by Hilliard Lyons
11/09/07 SIX SIX FLAGS INC downside earnings surprise (-55.80%)
11/08/07 LYV LIVE NATION, INC. downside earnings surprise (-30.38%)
11/06/07 FUN CEDAR FAIR LP downside earnings surprise (-24.89%)
11/01/07 WON WESTWOOD ONE INC upside earnings surprise (+900.00%)
11/01/07 WWE WORLD WRESTLING ENT upside earnings surprise (+33.33%)
11/01/07 WMG WARNER MUSIC GRP CRP downgraded by Pali Research
10/30/07 PRXI PREMIER EXHIBITIONS downgraded by Dougherty & Company
10/22/07 RCL ROYAL CARIBBEAN CR upside earnings surprise (+3.95%)
10/15/07 PRXI PREMIER EXHIBITIONS coverage initiated by Dougherty & Company
10/10/07 PRXI PREMIER EXHIBITIONS downside earnings surprise (-5.56%)
10/10/07 CCL CARNIVAL CORP upgraded by Lehman Brothers
10/10/07 RCL ROYAL CARIBBEAN CR upgraded by Lehman Brothers
10/10/07 WWE WORLD WRESTLING ENT coverage initiated by Roth Capital
09/25/07 WON WESTWOOD ONE INC upgraded by Deutsche Securities
09/20/07 CCL CARNIVAL CORP upside earnings surprise (+3.09%)
09/20/07 LYV LIVE NATION, INC. coverage initiated by JP Morgan


http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/recent/716_1.html


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 Tune in all season to the NFL on Westwood One’s Radio Network.

• Announcers: Dave Sims, Bob Trumpy and Tommy Tighe
• Air Time: 7:30pm ET
• Delivery Method: Satellite
• Clearance time: Sunday nights
• Local Avails: 19 min/gm
• Network Avails: 45 min/gm

2007-2008 NFL FOOTBALL FORMAT
VERSION ‘B’—-SUNDAY NIGHT GAMES

At 7:30 PM ET, Sunday Night Football opens with NFL Sunday. From 7:57:50-8:00:00 pm ET, stations have a 2-minute local break w/an adjacent 10-second station ID window
At 8:00PM ET, Sunday Night Football re-opens with theme, intro and Network billboards…
[By (sponsor) and by (sponsor)]. Following the final Network billboard, fifteen seconds of music
in the clear will play…Stations may roll over this fill music with a 15-second local billboard.

7:30:00 PM Program open
Pos #1 - “This is NFL Sunday” -Station (120)
Pos #2 - “You’re Listening To NFL Sunday On Westwood One” -Network (120)
Pos #3 - “This Is NFL Sunday” -Station (120)
Pos #4 - “You’re Listening To NFL Sunday On Westwood One” -Network (120)
Pos #5 - “This is NFL Sunday” -Station (120)
7:59:50 PM Station Identification
FORMAT NOTES

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